When I
first heard we had to do this large social media part for the class, I was
reluctant. I knew about Twitter and often search through and use twitter for
social media content and news, but I had never used a blog as a means of
expressing my thoughts and critical analysis of news content as it relates to
political science. After doing so, I realized it is a great way to really
analyze the news and politics in depth while also seeing other viewpoints of
other students’ ideas on the same subjects.
My
blog is called ‘Mass Media and International Conflicts: War Games.’ The blog’s
purpose was to focus on the intersection of American politics and how it
relates to international policies and intervention in international affairs. I
tried to focus on as many different news outlets as possible to get the
information I used to analyze international affairs that relate to U.S.
politics. It was challenging to use so many different sources for this, because
there are different viewpoints of our domestic political policies overseas. I
think this ended up being for my benefit though, because I was able to compare
and contrast a lot of these sources and summarize them and make an educated
analysis from the knowledge I gained. Like I stated before, I linked these news
articles to my blog for others to also read and analyze my analysis as I did
for others’ blogs as well.
The
theme of the blog is also about international intervention of politics and its
interception with mass media coverage. Most of the focus ended up being in the
Middle East even though it was a pretty broad topic I could cover with
international politics. There were a few stories that were in Asia and Europe,
but for the most part, I focused on the Middle East and civil wars, domestic
intervention internationally, and the media content that held all of these
things.
The
most interesting content on the blog was specifically based on Syria and the
country’s civil war. There was a lot of different information on this topic,
and it was interesting to see the different aspects of reporting and
information on the country. It was also interesting to research and read the
media content on the U.S. intervention in the country and the reactions of
Americans, Syrians, and other international communities. This was one of the
more controversial interventions under the Obama Administration.
Overall
my blogging experience has been very helpful. It was interesting to read so
many different sources on different topics for the blog and really analyze and
learn from the different ideas and compare the same ideas these media sources
had. It was also interesting to see other peoples’ blogs and read and comment
on other different topics these peer blogs covered. If I had to go back and do
it again, I think I would be more persistent about doing it every week at a
certain time, as I could not seem to find a specific schedule to find topics to
blog about.
